Global fintech IRIS Business Services Limited has partnered with the Government of Telangana to boost the MSME ecosystem in the state. At an event yesterday, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy launched the MSME policy, and IRIS CEO S. Swaminathan signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Special Chief Secretary Shri Jayesh Ranjan.
The collaboration will involve IRIS investing in technology-driven solutions, with costs potentially covered through user charges, while the government will provide administrative support and promote awareness of the initiatives to benefit as many MSMEs as possible.
The digitization of India has created valuable data streams that can significantly benefit MSMEs, says IRIS CEO S. Swaminathan, who identified over a dozen standalone business use cases. He highlighted that Telangana can achieve its goal of becoming a trillion-dollar economy by 2035 if both government and industry effectively leverage data.
At a recent event at Shilpa Kala Vedika, Swaminathan announced two initiatives, including an MSME dashboard for Department of MSME officers. This tool will provide real-time access to information on GST registrations and cancellations, helping officers monitor economic activity across the state. Swaminathan noted that while new registrations are positive, cancellations could indicate job losses and declining economic health.
The second initiative is a multilingual Invoice Registry Portal, enabling MSMEs in Telangana to generate free e-invoices in Telugu. Swaminathan noted that the portal will offer various value-added services, and the GST council has recently expanded the e-invoice mandate to include B2C transactions.
He explained that this MoU signifies a significant entry into the data applications sector, referred to as the “Consume” segment, with several use cases already identified.